Syndrie
Both heartbreaking and beautiful, Tayari Jones has crafted a poignant story about two girls who crave maternal connections after growing up motherless. This is a story about family and friendship, love and heartbreak, and growing up as a black women in the south in the middle of the segregation era.
Referring to each other as cradle friends, Vernice and Annie have known each other their whole lives and grew up together from babies all the way to adulthood. Connected by the loss of their mothers (one by death, the other by abandonment) these two girls both understand and care for each other deeply. They are perfect foils to each other where Vernice tends to be more of a rational thinker while Annie often lets her emotions guide her. And even though they end up going on separate journeys as they enter adulthood, the girls keep their bond strong by keeping in touch via letters. It was really nice to see a friendship so strong that it couldn't be broken by either distance or differing life experiences (because they do end up living significantly different lives).
Although I'd consider the overarching tone of this novel to be more somber than anything else, it still has its bright moments and is overall a really nice read. Honestly it's just a very realistic story — after all, not everything in life goes correctly all the time. Jones did a great job with the story pacing as well as giving us fully fleshed-out characters that were easy to care about and therefore want to keep reading about.
In showing the girls at both their most fragile moments and their strongest moments, this ends up being a rather thought-provoking story that will probably sit with readers for awhile after they've finished. I would highly recommend it to anybody who enjoys character driven novels and literary fiction as a whole.
(I received an advance review copy of this book from the publisher, Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, via NetGalley and I am leaving this review voluntarily. All opinions are my own.)
Both heartbreaking and beautiful, Tayari Jones has crafted a poignant story about two girls who crave maternal connections after growing up motherless. This is a story about family and friendship, love and heartbreak, and growing up as a black women in the south in the middle of the segregation era.
Referring to each other as cradle friends, Vernice and Annie have known each other their whole lives and grew up together from babies all the way to adulthood. Connected by the loss of their mothers (one by death, the other by abandonment) these two girls both understand and care for each other deeply. They are perfect foils to each other where Vernice tends to be more of a rational thinker while Annie often lets her emotions guide her. And even though they end up going on separate journeys as they enter adulthood, the girls keep their bond strong by keeping in touch via letters. It was really nice to see a friendship so strong that it couldn't be broken by either distance or differing life experiences (because they do end up living significantly different lives).
Although I'd consider the overarching tone of this novel to be more somber than anything else, it still has its bright moments and is overall a really nice read. Honestly it's just a very realistic story — after all, not everything in life goes correctly all the time. Jones did a great job with the story pacing as well as giving us fully fleshed-out characters that were easy to care about and therefore want to keep reading about.
In showing the girls at both their most fragile moments and their strongest moments, this ends up being a rather thought-provoking story that will probably sit with readers for awhile after they've finished. I would highly recommend it to anybody who enjoys character driven novels and literary fiction as a whole.
(I received an advance review copy of this book from the publisher, Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, via NetGalley and I am leaving this review voluntarily. All opinions are my own.)